Remember Your Card
by DrkVrtx
Summary: AU. Street Magician!Mako. Asami comes home to an impromptu show one evening.


Asami pulled the band from her hair and sighed relief as she shook it free. Another day's work put to rest; she couldn't wait for the weekend. For the time being she was just glad to be home. The hands of her office clock ticked by with painful sluggishness all day and Asami wished she could bend reality like her boyfriend. Of course, wishful thinking was just that and she had to endure the by-product of broken air conditioning in a stuffy work space. Her blouse was sticking to her back and Asami yearned for a shower more than anything and everything else right now.

Well, perhaps not everything.

The matter of said boyfriend being in her living room was like a magnetic pull. He was sitting on the sofa facing the outside world, tall panes of glass cut into the back wall. Asami veered into the room without really thinking about it, carrying her suit jacket over her arm. If she looked hard enough she could probably pick out her office building, squabbling with a dozen others to crown the city's skyline. But the sight of broad shoulders beneath a light grey cotton shirt was more appealing to her eye.

He didn't look up as she walked over to him, but her presence was far from a secret. The click of short black heels announced her if the front door slamming shut hadn't already. Mako was perched on the edge of his seat, velvet blue cloth spread over the coffee table. The whisper of shuffled cards accompanied the movements of Mako's hands. Asami let her bag slip quietly to the floor and leaned over him, a kiss to the cheek her greeting.

"You smell like a hard day's work," he said, mouth curved as he half turned.

Asami nipped his ear in retaliation. "Be nice. I'm stuck in an office winning our bread while you're on the streets entertaining the locals."

Mako chuckled. He paused in his habitual shuffling of the patterned, red backed deck to offer her an apologetic kiss. He didn't need to stop, of course. Asami was convinced the man's hands could operate more than well enough on their own as he slept.

She enjoyed his mouth against hers and the prickle of stubble against her palm for a little longer before drawing away. He was smiling as she straightened her back, and Asami could see that typical glimmer in his eye that preluded something Mako thought witty. She hushed him with a finger to the lips. "Not a word," she told him. He wrinkled his nose instead, grinning when she flicked him on the forehead. Asami tossed her jacket over his face with a huff and Mako laughed aloud beneath it.

"Shut it," she said, walking around the sofa and over to the windows. She took a peek through the glass, watching the early evening traffic flowing thickly through the streets below.

"So how was your day?" Mako asked her, tempering his smirk as Asami turned with folded arms and non-amused pout to face him. Of course, he had made her suit jacket disappear. He smoothly shuffled the cards in hand with his golden eyes always on her, swing cutting the deck without blinking.

"Air conditioning still isn't working," she griped. "Highlight of my day was essentially any moment not spent sitting in my office."

"Sounds tough, sweetie."

She poked her tongue out at him, turning back to a cityscape draped in fading daylight. "How was yours then? Hardly any more interesting than mine, I bet."

"Actually, I ran into a pretty tricky situation today," Mako replied.

Asami heard the hint of emphasis in his voice and paused. She almost rolled her eyes when she looked back at him. He was a wearing a goofy smile. She watched as he tapped the long edge of the deck of cards against the table and squared them.

"One of the most simple but effective ways to impress a spectator is to find their card," Mako began, with one movement spreading the deck across the velvet cloth in the shape of an arc. "And it doesn't hurt that doing so is one of my favourite bits of magic to perform," he continued, raising his eyes to find hers with a curve to his mouth. He dropped them after a moment to look down at the spread of cards.

"Let's say that I asked you to pick any one of these at random and you went for the...Queen of Diamonds, just as an example, and I ask you to remember it for me."

Asami's eyebrow rose a fraction as she came away from the window, drawn towards Mako by the light, casual ease of his voice. He pushed up the cuffs of his shirt to the elbow as he held her card between thumb and index finger. He slipped it back into the spread of cards afterwards, hand moving from left to right along the shape of the arc to collect the deck back together before neatly squaring it.

"There's more ways than I'd care to count for a magician to go about finding that card again," Mako said, taking the deck in his left hand. Asami's eyes followed him, as they always did. "Personally, I've a particular affinity for shuffling them. Simple and effective. For example, I could do the classic shuffle, the one everyone knows," Mako told her, and then showed her.

He picked up a bunch of cards from the bottom of the pack with his right hand and with steady rhythm threw them down on top, over and over again. His gaze never shifted from her face and despite herself Asami couldn't help but meet his eyes. She forced them back down to his hands. Always watch the hands.

"I could cut them as well," he went on, placing the deck face down on the table. Mako took portions of cards from the top and placed them beside the now shortened deck, repeating the process several times, always with a different amount of cards in hand. Mako reformed the deck and cut it down all over again. Asami shifted closer to the table.

"Now, your card's pretty lost in here," he said, tapping the top of the deck. Mako paused, then tilted his head a fraction. "You remember what it was, right?"

"Seriously?" Asami replied, as though she hadn't been asked to remember hundreds of cards by this point.

"Just checking," he said with a chuckle as he picked the deck back up. "Some people get so caught up staring at my hands they forget."

She kept her eyes intently on them. "Right." Where was he going with this though? Asami had asked him a simple question and apparently got front row tickets to a show.

"So like I was saying, the spectator's card is very much mixed up in here," Mako continued, giving the deck a little shake as he held it up. "But in the interest of fairness, let's shuffle it again. Can't hurt. I like this one too."

Asami watched him cut the deck smoothly in half, taking one in each hand. He brought them to meet at the centre of the velvet cloth, corner to corner, peeling the top edge of the cards upwards and proceeding to perform a riffle shuffle. He slotted the cards amongst themselves and squared the deck back up afterwards.

"I was performing in a bar earlier today, to a small group of friends" Mako said, holding the cards together in his left hand. "One of them asks me if he can shuffle the deck, to which I've no objection of course." But a slight frown began to take shape on his face. "Thing is, when he takes the cards, he does _this_."

Mako cut the deck in half again, though this time he turned one half face up. Asami tilted her head at that. Mako pushed both halves up towards the top of the table, forming two columns of spread cards for her to see. One half was indeed wholly face up, the other face down. After he collected them again, Mako slotted the face up half into the deck, taking a few moments to work the cards between their fellows. He placed the reformed deck at the top of the table once more and this time pulled downwards, spreading the cards out to show that they were -

"Interlaced, completely," Mako told her. "And then he cut them to add salt to the wound." He picked up the deck afterwards, exasperation slipping into his voice. "The guy couldn't stop laughing when he gave me the cards back. I mean look at this," Mako said, lifting said cards at random intervals so Asami could see, leaning forward over the table. "Deck's mixed up like I've never seen before. Face to face, face to back, back to back." He sighed, squaring the cards. "I'm screwed, basically. The guy and his friends know it."

There was the slightest smirk to Asami's lips, but she could hide things almost as well as her boyfriend. His wounded pride was very much on display however, by way of his expression. The urge to tease him, just a little, was difficult to resist. Mako was very much dedicated to his craft and perhaps didn't deserve any more embarrassment, particularly at her hand. But he then looked up at her and there it was, that telling glimmer in his eyes. Asami frowned; there was more to this.

"So what did you do?"

"Well, I'm a magician," Mako replied, setting the cards face down in the middle of the table. "I did what any good magician would do."

He brought his right hand to hover over the top of the deck and clicked his fingers. Then he picked it up, turned it over and evenly spread the cards in the shape of an arc once more. Asami's eyes went round.

Every single card was face up.

"Except this one," Mako said, indicating the lone, face down card caught right in the middle of the arc. He drew it out with the tip of his index finger and flipped it over.

The Queen of Diamonds.

She stood there, staring down at the table, her folded arms loosely coming apart. Mako, the brilliant bastard, leaned back into the sofa, folding his hands into his lap. Asami looked up at him and in that moment legitimately couldn't tell whether or not she'd been played. She eventually found her voice, uttering the same question she always did.

"How the _hell_ did you do that?"

Mako shrugged, smiled and spread his open hands.

"Magic." 


End file.
